The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

by Stephen Hand

  Everything about the place was old, beat-up and rundown; no reason why the local police department should be any different. Still, all that mattered was that the sheriff should have the full power of the law behind him, so that he could come in and get this whole damn mess cleaned up.

  Sheriff Hoyt pulled up behind the van but Andy was disappointed to see that the sheriff was alone: no Kemper, no Erin.

  Unlike his automobile, Hoyt was tidy to the point of pristine. His uniform was crisply ironed with razor-sharp creases, his hat was firm and starched, his gold star gleamed with authority and his hair was buzz-cut with military efficiency.

  The man himself was in his late forties and was solidly built. You wouldn’t want to mess with Sheriff Hoyt—not now, not ever. And for that reason alone his presence was immediately reassuring. Sheriff Hoyt was the kind of guy who immediately commanded respect simply by the way he stood with calm ramrod certainty.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he got out of the squad car. Judging by his voice, the sheriff was a local boy and, just like Luda May, his face was lined with wear and tear. Andy also noticed the sheriff could do with a shave which was kinda surprising.

  Pepper rushed forward. “You have no idea how glad we are to see you.”

  Hoyt took the girl’s gratitude in his stride as he moved round to the bloodstained window at the rear of the van.

  “I’m guessing that’s where the body is.”

  The sense of relief growing among the kids was palpable. At long last, things were going their way. The sheriff had come. He’d take care of everything. Once Kemper and Erin got back.

  The sheriff opened the side door of the A-100 and climbed on board. Pepper, Morgan and Andy looked on, their bodies slick with layer upon layer of sweat. They’d tried to follow the sheriff inside but the stench of the corpse was too much. The moment Hoyt had opened the door, it’d taken Morgan every ounce of his willpower not to chuck on the spot.

  Fortunately, the sheriff didn’t have the same problem. He’d seen it all before, many times, and neither the intense heat nor the smell of decaying flesh had any effect on him.

  Pepper watched as Hoyt methodically inspected the corpse. He lifted the oily rags off of the girl’s head. Pepper almost burst into tears—that face, the poor girl’s face. He then checked her hands and her wrists. Then her ankles, which Morgan thought odd.

  Then the sheriff paused and took a moment to follow the bloodstains through the van, tracing the spread pattern, the spray, the viscous arc, working out the angle of the kill. Until finally, he went and picked up the blood-smeared revolver they’d left lying in the girl’s lap.

  “Who does this belong to?” he asked.

  “She had it on her,” said Andy before anyone else could reply. The way he saw it, he’d have to take care of things until Kemper got back.

  Hoyt nodded then raised the barrel of the gun to his nose. He sniffed it. Then he lowered the gun, cocked the hammer, opened the cylinder and checked the individual bullet chambers.

  Done.

  Moving sharply, he clicked everything neatly back into place—then said, “You sure about that?”

  “Kemper, where the hell are you? KEMPER!”

  When Erin had reached the porch, she’d found that Kemper was gone. She’d almost expected it but it still frightened and pissed her off.

  Old Monty had followed her outside and told her she could go look for the boy out back if she wanted to. And so here she was, walking the perimeter of the house and calling out her boyfriend’s name.

  “Maybe he went back to the old Crawford Mill,” suggested the old man as he effortlessly wheeled along just behind her, the dog standing in his lap.

  Erin shook her head, more in frustration than to disagree. If this was any kind of joke, or if Kemper had just got bored and gone back to the van, he could kiss their marriage—and his child—goodbye.

  The wind was blowing her long hair. She stopped and tucked it behind her ears, using the time to reconsider her options. Maybe the old man was right, maybe Kemper had gone back. And she herself had to go meet the sheriff, who was due at the mill any time now.

  Kemper!

  “Goddamn him,” she said huffily.

  Without saying goodbye to Old Monty, she set off down the grassy rise and along the overgrown horse trail that would lead her back to the mill and her friends.

  As she went, Erin failed to notice that something was moving in one of the ground floor windows of the Hewitt house. Someone was looking through the blinds, watching her, the fabric strips bending to reveal two insane eyes, savagely feeding on her tender young image.

  The sheriff went and fetched a long roll of adhesive cellophane from the trunk of his automobile. Then he and the two boys began the unpleasant process of lifting the dead girl up from the rear seat of the van.

  Pepper could hardly bring herself to watch. It was almost unreal seeing her friends like that, working in silence, handling the corpse. But unknown to any of them—even the sheriff—someone was watching the whole scene through the blood-rimmed bullet hole of the rear window: Jedidiah.

  Taking care to avoid being spotted, the boy watched attentively as the three men lifted the girl up from her resting place and slowly lugged her carcass out of the truck. Jedidiah couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Erin walked as fast as she could through the tangled undergrowth.

  Dusk was still some hours away but the sun had already begun its slow descent towards the horizon, casting long shadows all around her. And the arthritic limbs of the trees now appeared lower than before when Erin and Kemper had come this way before.

  “Kemper!” she shouted. In fact, she hadn’t stopped shouting all the way back from the farmstead.

  “Kemper!” she tried again, when the sudden sound of a branch snapping somewhere behind her made her stop.

  “Kemper, is that you?”

  Silence.

  Heart pounding, the girl spun round and strained her eyes to see into the dense thicket of trees and bushes behind her. Then, slowly, she turned in a gradual full circle, scrutinizing every plant, leaf and damn blade of grass.

  Still nothing.

  Erin picked up and almost ran the rest of the way back to the mill.

  When Andy first saw the roll of tape in Hoyt’s hand, he thought the sheriff was going to use it to seal the van, or cordon the scene of the incident. He had no idea that Hoyt was going to ask Morgan and him to help get the girl down on the floor, so that the sheriff could then use the tape to wrap her up like an insect in a damn cocoon. But that’s what he did.

  The sheriff simply peeled the end of the tape off the spool, stuck the end of the tape to her feet, then pulled the spool round and round her body. Round and round the tape went, binding, encasing.

  Hoyt had asked the boys to help—pick her feet up, hold her back, lift her head—until finally the dead girl looked like a cellophane mummy, the adhesive shroud so tight that only the finest drops of blood could escape through the shining, striated plastic.

  When all was done, the sheriff asked the boys to help carry her body over to the back seat of the patrol vehicle.

  Hoyt held the door open as the two frightened young men struggled to get the corpse inside. Rigor mortis was already starting to affect the dead tissue.

  “It just seems wrong,” said Pepper, unable to believe the sight in front of her eyes, her friends carting the shrinkwrapped body like . . . like a pack of meat.

  God no!

  Pepper dashed that sick thought out of her mind. It was crazy. Everything must be getting to her.

  “Young lady,” replied the sheriff firmly. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for the dead. But if I don’t get this girl on ice right quick, she’s sure to rot.”

  Andy saw that Pepper was about to say something but stopped her. “Thanks so much for your help,” he blurted. “Really.”

  Then he turned to Pepper, his face a clear signal for her to keep her mouth shut. They were getting there
. Everything was almost done. Why risk pissing the sheriff off?

  With Hoyt’s help, Andy and Morgan were finally able to hoist the body into position on the back seat of the police car where it lay, wrapped and bleeding.

  The sheriff wiped a hand across his upper lip.

  “I’d stay with you until your friends get back,” he said. “But if I do . . .” He motioned to the body on the back seat, then kicked the car door shut.

  “We understand,” said Morgan enthusiastically. “I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”

  “So am I,” said the sheriff walking round to the driver’s side. “Old Monty isn’t one for keeping company, anyway.” He paused. “Sure you know how to find your way out?”

  “No problem,” Morgan smiled. “Thanks again, sheriff.”

  Hoyt held Morgan’s stare for a moment—the kid kept smiling, willing the sheriff to be on his way. Finally, he removed his hat and climbed inside the vehicle. Then he started the engine, reversed his car away from the van, turned round and drove back down the access road towards the highway.

  As the patrol car pulled away, Morgan looked down at his hands. He would’ve given anything for some hot water and a bar of soap.

  Through the sliding metal door, beyond the small square room with its pale green strip light, through another door, down a long narrow staircase of rough paneled walls—the stairs made of thin wooden slats—and finally into the basement.

  Kemper opened his eyes.

  And wished he hadn’t.

  The basement was a dark cramped expanse of nightmarish, rusted violence. Everywhere Kemper looked, he saw the disarray of a diseased fucking mind.

  Shelves cluttered with tools, bloodstained knives, jars—rows and rows of glass jars filled with God knows what—pulleys, bits of broken bones lashed together with horse leathers, chains, shoes, an old mangled wheel dangling from a rope in midair, hooks, ropes, mortician’s scales, wooden beams, discarded furniture.

  Pipes ran along the ceiling, up the walls, twisting through the corroded mayhem of the purposely collected psychotic debris. There was a bathtub lying on the floor in front of a blazing, ornate cast iron furnace.

  There were animal snares, farming tools, bottles, items of luggage, shelves, more shelves and buckets filled with fetid shit-smelling broth. A busted-up piano. A whole pile of trash.

  And a meat cleaver.

  Much of the basement floor was hidden beneath two inches of filthy black water, coagulating in places into venereal sump, the mud and shit of previous acts of abomination.

  It was dark down there with no real light, except for a feeble yellow glow from the furnace and a thick shaft of sunlight that shone down through a jagged hole high up in one of the walls.

  There were oil lanterns scattered about but none of them were lit, leaving Kemper to stare feebly towards the sharp rays of freedom, reminding him of how he once took green fields for granted.

  He choked from the stink. Nothing in the van compared to this. Nothing—not even the slaughterhouse they’d passed this morning.

  Toxic.

  Carnal.

  Death.

  “W . . . what . . . are you doing?” slurred Kemper.

  He’d heard his attacker shuffling about among the cancerous implements of this blackened kill-pit, long before he’d seen him. And when Kemper finally did see the skin-stealing motherfucker, it was as a distorted reflection in the meat cleaver.

  But suddenly, the heaving mound of murderous insanity was upon him.

  Kemper could see the mask he’d stitched together, the skin flapping loosely as he came charging forward.

  “DON’T! STOP!” Kemper shouted.

  He tried to move but even if his limbs had obeyed him, he would have found that he’d been completely and totally bound.

  The sharp edge of the heavy cleaver came down on Kemper, silencing his protests with the asphyxiation of blood.

  Kemper felt bubbles bursting in his throat but, though he struggled, he oddly felt as if he no longer cared.

  In his fading delirium, Kemper noticed the killer was wearing a tie. It was a black tie. At last Kemper understood that his body was about to become a plaything in the smothering, eager hands of the snorting maniac.

  A tear formed in the boy’s staring eye and he managed silent thanks that he would not be around when the final violation of his body took place.

  One desperate crumb of comfort.

  One pathetic consolation in abject mortal enslavement.

  EIGHT

  They still didn’t want to go inside the van. All three of them just hung out, looking in through the open side door.

  The interior of the vehicle was matted with blood, fragments of bone and hardening lumps of brain. The worsening putrefaction was attracting flies.

  No one said it but they all knew that once Kemper and Erin returned, they’d have to all get back inside. And then they’d have to go the rest of the way to Dallas in a truck that looked like it had been the scene of a hold-up.

  “Poor Kemper,” said Andy. “He’ll never get the stink out of this van.”

  “Think we should try to clean it?” suggested Pepper optimistically.

  Morgan took another look at the mess. “Be my guest.”

  At first it looked as if the girl was actually going to give it a shot, but almost as soon as she made to step aboard she began to feel nauseous.

  “You okay?” A woman’s voice.

  Erin!

  They could see her walking round the side of the mill just past the wreck of an old farm tractor. Boy, were they glad to see her. Unfortunately, Pepper didn’t get out of the van quickly enough.

  “It’s too much,” she gulped. “I’m gonna be sick.”

  Trying her hardest to keep it down, she pushed Andy and Morgan out of the way then went round to some thick grass on the other side of the van.

  She puked her guts up.

  The guys could hear her retching as they went to meet Erin.

  Andy was worried. She didn’t exactly look happy. Where was Kemper?

  “Good news,” said Erin. “The sheriff’s on his way.”

  Simultaneously, Andy and Morgan looked at each other, then back at Erin.

  “Uh, Erin—” said Andy confused.

  “Where’s Kemper?” she interrupted.

  “The sheriff was already here,” continued the boy, even more confused. Why was she asking them where Kemper was when he was with her?

  And now they were all confused.

  “What?” asked Erin, shaking her head.

  Pepper had finished being sick and was coming round to join them. She’d heard everything and was as puzzled as the rest of them.

  “He took the body,” she explained, wiping warm traces of vomit from the corners of her mouth.

  Erin was dumbfounded. Were they serious?

  She leant over and looked through the windshield of the Dodge. They were right; the girl was gone, but . . .

  She turned to Andy, feeling utterly lost. “I don’t get it.”

  Then she walked away from the van and looked up at the abandoned mill. It was exactly as she remembered it. Nothing had changed.

  Frowning, she went back round towards the rotting groves and the trail up to the Hewitt house.

  “Kemper!” she shouted.

  Now she was near the old tractor again—it wore rust like a second skin—and Pepper went up to talk to her. They needed to figure this thing out. Everybody just had to stand still and calm down. She was about to reach out and touch Erin, when she saw something lying on the ground, something almost hidden by one of the massive rear wheels of the tractor.

  “Andy,” said Erin, pacing, “where the fuck is he?”

  But Andy didn’t answer. In fact, he almost hadn’t heard her because his whole attention was fixed on Pepper. The girl was standing upright looking at something in the dirt. Which would have been no big deal, except she looked scared shitless.

  “Pepper?” he called gently.

&nbs
p; But she couldn’t speak. She kept looking down near the thick tire with its deep worn tread.

  And now Erin could also see how scared Pepper was—which filled Erin with dread because she didn’t need any more revelations right now. Sure, the sheriff news was good, but nearly every other surprise that day had brought them nothing but pain.

  She knelt down close to the tractor, keeping beside Andy as he reached low and pulled something free from the brittle earth. Morgan stood next to Pepper, not touching her, but hoping his proximity might help her feel a little safer. At the very least, he hoped she might stop trembling.

  “Shit, Andy—” gasped Erin.

  He had prized loose a string of broken teeth wired together with some bent orthodontic braces. Human teeth.

  “What is it?” asked Pepper, her voice wavering, but she’d already seen what it was; she just needed to hear it from someone else, to prove she wasn’t going crazy.

  “Nothing,” he replied hurriedly, trying to protect her.

  She wasn’t fooled.

  “It’s somebody’s teeth, isn’t it?”

  Andy stood up, the gold string of bones in his hand, “Pepper, just calm down.”

  But Pepper was losing it.

  She looked Erin straight in the eye and told her, “Erin, find your goddamn boyfriend. It’s time to go—”

  Suddenly they heard a rapid squeaking sound, repeating over and over. They looked up.

  It was Jedidiah. He was sitting on the tractor, jumping up and down in the driver’s seat, contracting and expanding the dead springs beneath.

  Andy had no idea how the boy managed to creep up there without any of them noticing, but now he was just about ready to give the boy—

  PAAAAAAHHHHHH!

  A car horn! It was somewhere in the distance, back along the dirt road that had brought them to this damned place.

  The sound of the horn was constant, blaring, calling them.

  “I’ll bet that’s him,” said Andy with a dry smile. It had to be Kemper. It had to.